Disciples in Mission

The following material is from the Disciples in Mission website, the office responsible for overseeing the implementing and growth of Collaboratives in the Archdiocese of Boston. For even more information, click here.

The New Evangelization

Parish based evangelization works, and we can train for it, but we need strong Parishes in order to do so. Disciples in Mission calls every Parish of the Archdiocese of Boston to become a strong, stable, intentional, and effective center of the New Evangelization. Disciples in Mission is not a plan to close Parishes, because we believe that Parishes are going to grow, not shrink, and we are going to need all of the space that we have. In order better to focus our resources on evangelization, Disciples in Mission organizes the 288 Parishes of the Archdiocese of Boston into approximately 135 Collaboratives.

The new evangelization is the Church’s call for us to go out and evangelize, that is, to share the Gospel, with baptized Catholics, who may have heard the message of the Gospel before but need to hear it in new ways in order to be able to embrace it. The message of the Gospel is also called the Good News of Jesus Christ, which is to say that God entered the world through Christ, who suffered and died for our sins and rose from the dead, to ensure for us the promise of eternal life. That is God’s saving promise, which is why we sometimes refer to the Gospel or Good News as the Story of Salvation. Sometimes we call it the kerygma, which is a Greek word for proclamation, because we think of this Good News as the most important of any and all possible proclamations.

The new evangelization is about reaching out to those who have heard this Good News. It is bringing that message forward with new ardor, new methods, and new expressions, so that the people of this age are able to hear the gospel with fresh ears, and, we hope, commit or renew their commitment to being intentional disciples of Jesus Christ.

We would suggest that the Second Vatican Council was a missionary council, an evangelizing council, which started the movement of the Church towards a New Evangelization. Pope Paul VI continued encouraging us all in this direction when he wrote a document called Evangelization in the Modern World, Pope St. John Paul II explicitly called for a New Evangelization, Pope Benedict provided the framework for how we should engage in this New Evangelization, and Pope Francis is an example for all of us in how to live it out.

Great-- But what does an evangelizing parish look like?

Everything a parish does should be focused on the goal of evangelizing and making disciples. That is, sharing the message of the Gospel and bringing people closer to Christ. That is why parishes exist - they are meant to be active communities moving closer to Christ through all that they do, and most especially through the sacraments. An evangelizing parish is a parish that engages parishioners and non- parishioners, invests time and resources in them, and invites them into closer relationship with Christ.

To engage in this work effectively doesn’t mean you should present this program and not that program. It means that you should encourage active, engaged, and intentional discipleship in all that you do as a parish. This process must be grounded in Christ and must make explicit use of His name and the story of His life, death, and resurrection.

It should mean that personal prayer and witness leads to an increase in open and active discipleship, and in open and active processes of forming intentional disciples. That is, an environment that encourages and fosters disciple–making and growth in discipleship. What we are saying here is that an evangelizing parish looks like a place where people know and love Jesus, speak openly of their relationship with Him, and serve each other living in the light of that love.

This one goal, evangelization and discipleship, should pervade parish activities – hospitality and fellowship, faith formation, the promotion of vocations, liturgical and sacramental life, and service and charitable endeavors.

Okay, but what exactly is a Collaborative?

A Collaborative is a grouping of one, two, or three Parishes that work together for the goal of evangelization.

A Collaborative has one Pastor, one set of assigned priests and deacons, and one Pastoral Team (including Pastoral Associates, Religious Education and Faith Formation leaders, Finance and Operations specialists, and administrative and facilities personnel). All of these work together for all of the Parishes of the Collaborative. The Collaborative has one Pastoral Council, and one Local Pastoral Plan for evangelization.

The Collaborative does not share money or bank accounts or other financial assets or obligations. If Parish A and B form a Collaborative, and you put your money in your offertory envelope or give online for Parish B, it will go into the bank account of Parish B, not Parish A. If Parish B has obligations (debt, deferred maintenance, etc.) going into the Collaborative, those obligations remain the obligations of Parish B alone, not Parish A. The Collaborative is not a legal or canonical entity. It does not have a federal tax payer number. It does not have a bank account. It cannot own property.

Because the patrimony of each Parish continues to belong to that Parish, as well as the obligations of each Parish continuing to belong to that Parish, each Parish has its own Finance Council. However, since many costs are shared, the finance councils of all of the Parishes in the Collaborative may often meet together.

Why is the Archdiocese doing this, and why now?

We are dealing with what we have come to call our “four deficits.”

We don’t have enough priests.

We don’t have enough trained lay ecclesial ministers.

We don’t have enough money.

We don’t have enough people coming to Mass.

The first three deficits are directly related to the fourth. It is very tempting to try to make a Pastoral Plan which just addresses one of the first three. For instance, if we were to close a bunch of Parishes, we would need fewer priests. If we cut way back on expenses and sold lots of property, we’d have more money. But no plan can outpace the rate at which the fourth, and most important, deficit is having an impact. In 1970, some 70% of self-identified Catholics went to Mass on a weekly basis. Now, about 16% of self-identified Catholics are at Mass on any given weekend.

So, Disciples in Mission is basically a plan to address the fourth deficit. Without addressing that one, no plan can work.

You can say all that, but isn’t Disciples in Mission just a back door way of closing Parishes?

From 1990 to 2000, the Archdiocese of Boston closed about 60 Parishes. In 2004, we closed another 65, in a process called “Reconfiguration.” Those closures solved some of our problems, but they did not solve the core problem. Each year, in the Archdiocese, about 5000 fewer people come to Sunday Mass. That has been a steady decline, which began in the early 1980s. That is our basic problem. No form of Pastoral Planning can be effective which does not address that core problem.

Since we believe that Parishes can be effective centers of evangelization, this is not the moment to close Parishes.

Disciples in Mission is a plan for growth, not a plan for downsizing. Indeed, it would be a very poorly conceived plan if it were intended for downsizing. We believe that we are going to need the space we have, because we believe that we are going to refill our churches and our Parishes and our seminaries.

It is possible to conceive of a Pastoral Plan that is a managed form of downsizing. Disciples in Mission is not that plan.